The Second Son

by Martin Jay Weiss

  He’d assumed they were tears of joy.

  Brooke was an avid painter, preferred watercolors to oil, and always had an easel set up somewhere. That evening, she had been out on the screened-in porch painting the blood-orange sunset. It was chilly and cozy and Ethan wanted to make a romantic evening that Brooke would never forget. He set up a four-log fire, played a John Legend album, and lit dozens of candles amongst sprawled floor pillows. He lured her inside with the fragrant smell of his special cioppino. He poured her favorite Pinot Noir from Sonoma—Casa Carneros 1998—and told her how much he loved her.

  She seemed overly emotional. She touched the pendant necklace and burst into tears again, this time even more so.

  Maybe they weren’t tears of joy.

  He couldn’t have known then because that moment was interrupted by a booming thud from the adjacent room. Jack shouted, “Dude, you’re a country bumpkin!”

  They both laughed and Brooke asked, “Who is he talking to?”

  Jack shouted again, “Don’t pick Adam over Blake!”

  “I think he’s watching The Voice,” Ethan said. “He actually DVRs it.”

  Ethan brought out the seafood medley stew and turned down the lights to complete the perfect mood. He’d been preparing to present some ideas he had for their future together and had butterflies in his stomach. The good kind. When Ethan peeked in the den to see if they had sufficient privacy, Jack was heading out the door carrying an overnight bag.

  “Where are you going?” Ethan asked.

  “Told you, I made plans.”

  The door slammed.

  Brooke came around the corner. “Did Jack just leave?”

  “Gone again,” Ethan said with a mischievous grin. “We have the house all to ourselves.”

  She composed herself and brought him his glass of wine. “How can anyone be so happy all the time?”

  “My mother said I came out that way,” Ethan told her, as if it were agreed-upon family lore. “My brother got the grumpy gene.”

  Her smile faded and she said in his defense, “He’s just misunderstood.”

  “You have to admit, he is moody, especially lately.”

  “Cut him some slack.” She turned angry. “You have no idea what’s going on in his life.”

  Ethan had decided then that it wasn’t a good time to discuss how they should tell Jack that they wanted a place of their own or inquire about what kind of ring shape she fancied. The mood wasn’t right. Something else was on her mind.

  —

  Was she aware of Jack’s plans? Ethan now wondered. Was she already planning on leaving herself?

  And then he had the worst thought of all: Could they have run off together?

  CHAPTER 6

  Bailey waited until lunchtime on Friday before he broke the code of silence.

  “You have to say something to the team,” he said, barging into Ethan’s office.

  “Come right on in,” Ethan said. “You don’t have to knock.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Exactly.”

  Bailey sighed. “Sarcasm suits your brother, but for some reason it just makes you sound bitter.”

  “Thanks for that insight.”

  “Did you hear what I just said?” Bailey pressed. “You have to say something. They want to know why Jack left. He was a partner. We owe them an explanation.”

  “What can I say?” Ethan threw his hands up. “He wanted to get away from me so he went to our biggest competitor?”

  “Sugarcoat it any way you want. Just tell them something. They’re getting anxious, which makes me anxious, and I don’t like feeling anxious. Maybe say something about your girlfriend leaving so they realize you’re an emotional wreck, but it has nothing to do with the health of our company.”

  “You can tell them.”

  “I already did,” Bailey admitted, “but it would be nice if you acknowledged it. Tell them that everything will be okay.”

  Ethan groaned. “Will it?”

  “I don’t know, frankly, but we have to keep up appearances.”

  “You want me to make up something?”

  “For the love of God, I don’t care what you tell them. Tell them that you can’t tie your shoes without your brother, that he was the brains and you’re the brawn, and once your girlfriend realized, she ran off with your barber. At least they’ll feel empathy for you instead of wondering why you’ve locked yourself away all week.”

  “If you’re trying to cheer me up, it’s not working.”

  Bailey sat down on the edge of Ethan’s desk and cleared his throat. “Know what happens when you play a country music album backward?”

  Ethan stared back blankly.

  “You lose your girl. You lose your brother. You lose your home. You lose your mind. Get it?”

  Ethan couldn’t even muster a courtesy laugh. “I haven’t lost my home.”

  ”Just your sense of humor. Which brings up another thorny issue. The software fixes. With Jack gone, we need to put someone in charge, ASAP. You and I need to focus on other matters—”

  “Who’s our best programmer right now?”

  Bailey didn’t hesitate. “Emily.”

  “Then she’s our man.”

  “Right. Just wanted your blessing.” Bailey waved for Emily who was waiting right outside his door.

  “Congratulations,” Bailey said as she entered. “You are now our lead programmer.”

  “Wonderful,” she mused. “And I’m sure this comes with all the perks of longer hours and no raise.”

  “I knew she was perfect for the job,” Bailey joked. Then he turned back to Emily and asked, “Do you have the other thing?”

  Emily held up a green folder. “Right here.”

  Bailey’s beady eyes turned to Ethan, now somber. “Emily has something else to tell you.”

  Ethan feigned a smile. “What is it, Emily?”

  Emily gave Bailey a maddened look, as if he were forcing her to do his dirty work (which he was).

  “Go on,” Bailey urged.

  “Sorry to hear about your life imploding and all,” she said with a shaky voice. “It must suck for you—”

  “Thanks,” Ethan said through clenched teeth, “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

  Bailey burst out laughing and repeated, “Don’t let it hit you on the—”

  “Both of you,” Ethan added.

  Bailey ignored the request once again and slapped Emily on her ass. “Show him what we found.”

  “There’s this thing in America called sexual harassment,” she said calmly, as if talking to a petulant child, ”I could sue you for doing that.”

  “Sue me on your own time, love. This is important. Show him.”

  “Incorrigible,” Emily hissed as she approached Ethan’s desk and pulled Brooke’s letter from the folder. “I ran this through a Stalker search—”

  Ethan grabbed the letter and waved it at Bailey. “You took this off my desk!”

  “When you ran off to the loo, yesterday, yes.” Bailey pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket, put it between his lips, and mumbled, “Isn’t that why you showed it to me?”

  “I showed you in confidence, as in, don’t share it with anyone, and don’t even think about smoking in here.”

  “You know I’m trying to quit, Gov,” Bailey said as he got up, opened a window, and lit up anyway. He sucked in a big drag and turned to Emily, as if Ethan weren’t there. “You’d think a guy who works here would do a background check on a girl before asking her to move in. He never even Googled her.”

  Emily nodded in agreement. “We look into everyone except the people closest to us. Ironic.”

  “It’s not ironic,” Ethan said. “She asked me not to. It’s called respect.”

  “Well, she never asked us
,” Bailey said. “Go on, Emily.”

  “So I got her social security number off her credit card,” Emily continued. “She only had one. Didn’t even have a driver’s license—”

  “She didn’t want to drive,” Ethan said defensively. “She cared too much about the environment. Remember her lecture in Big Sur about hydrocarbons? And by the way, that corporate retreat was your idea, to make our staff more conscientious—”

  “I remember all that eco-babble crap,” Bailey said as he coughed up smoke. “Brooke had solicited me for months, offering a significant discount and a hard sell coquettish phone plea to sell me that this company needed this rustic retreat to be relevant, that all the tech start-ups in the know were doing it. Bloody hell, do you think I—the most unlikely outdoorsman on the planet—wanted to hike and watch the sunrise and chant? Being the horny, gullible Englishman that I am, I took her bait even before you fell head over heels. And apparently, so did the entire office. Her Brit brogue gave her a lot of clout with all our prepubescent Angelenos who tend to be impressed with anyone feigning authority, or using the English language properly, for that matter. The fact that she had a thing for tech entrepreneurs didn’t hurt either. She went on about how she understood the pressures we suffered from as a new and growing business in a fiercely competitive landscape and assured us she would help us find balance. Think about it. She was selling water to farmers in a drought. Anyone working for a start-up lives a life of sheer imbalance and stress. Most of us are young, ambitious, and competitive.”

  “Except you,” Emily chimed in. “You’re not so young.”

  “Right. I’m old as fuck. But I am ambitious. And when I’m not working, I’m thinking about work, or sex, because I’m competitive—”

  “I get it,” Ethan cut him off. “She was preaching to the choir.”

  “She was persuasive,” Bailey said. “She gave us the full court press. She obviously charmed your pants off, Mr. CEO. Why do you think she wanted to get close to Stalker?”

  “It’s just the way she is—”

  “Wrong. You have no idea who she is. Now shut up and listen to Emily.”

  “Gentle as a jackhammer,” Emily said as she turned to Ethan. “Are you sure you’re ready to hear this?”

  “He needs to hear this,” Bailey huffed.

  Ethan tossed a Nerf basketball across the room. It bounced off the rim and the backboard booed. “Go on.”

  Emily cleared her throat and began, “Brooke Shaw was born in Fresno, California, on September third, 1990. She had been arrested for a laundry list of petty crimes and spent years in a juvenile correctional facility. She became a heroine addict by age twenty—”

  “Did you hear that?” Bailey cut her off. “Brooke Shaw lives on the street. She’s a homeless woman who eats in soup kitchens and sleeps in cardboard boxes!”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Ethan protested.

  “Of course it is,” Bailey agreed. “Your Brooke Shaw is from London. Couldn’t fake that Kensington accent. She eats quinoa at Real Food Daily, sips espresso from Primo Passo, sleeps on three-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, and most likely has never even been to Fresno—”

  “Are you finished?” Emily interrupted Bailey.

  “I am.”

  “So I ran her letter through a fiber and fingerprint analysis,” Emily explained, “and look: different signatures. Different thumbprints.”

  “Different girl,” Bailey concluded as he grabbed the green folder, pulled out the police report of the homeless Brooke Shaw, and placed it next to Brooke’s letter. “Your girlfriend started using this homeless woman’s identity about two years ago—”

  “Or bought it,” Emily insinuated. “Heroin is expensive.”

  “The real question is why,” Bailey said. “She must have told you something about her past.”

  “Of course she did,” Ethan said, unconvincingly.

  Bailey and Emily both waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t because he couldn’t. Ethan felt like a complete fool, and it showed.

  Bailey asked, “Any idea where she’s from?”

  “London.”

  Bailey sneered. “Where in London? It’s a big place.”

  “You just said that she had a Kensington accent. I guess she’s from Kensington.”

  Bailey looked at the floor and shook his head. “She didn’t tell him where.”

  Emily agreed. “Clearly.”

  “You two are precious,” Ethan said. “I feel like I’m being interrogated by Mr. Blue and Ms. Blonde.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Emily asked.

  “He’s making a Reservoir Dogs reference,” Bailey explained.

  “Never heard of it,” Emily said.

  “Never heard of Reservoir Dogs, Gov. Too young.” He winked at Ethan and made a fist pump. “Try another movie from this century, so she gets your point—”

  “What I’m trying to say,” Ethan fumed, “is that our relationship was based on mutual respect. Have either one of you been in a relationship where the other person wants to know every-fucking-personal-thing?”

  They glanced at each other, both blushing, and neither answered.

  “Most people need to purge every detail about their past just to be understood,” Ethan continued. “We didn’t do that because someone always overreacts or dwells about things that you can’t change. I loved that Brooke didn’t need to know everything and judge me for it. She had the ability to focus on the present. It was refreshing.”

  “It was also naïve.” Bailey sputtered smoke. “Your lack of knowledge about her past made you blind and has turned this into a sordid affair.”

  “You don’t understand—”

  “That ignorance is bliss?”

  “She must have told you something that could help us,” Emily said. “Did she talk about her work?”

  “She developed corporate retreats at Dancing Rabbit to help entrepreneurs find more balance. She wasn’t—as you say—feigning authority.”

  “What about before you met her?”

  “She got her business degree at Oxford and worked for a few socially conscious start-ups—”

  “Give me a name of one of them.”

  “She never told me.”

  “Did she ever talk about her mom or dad?” Emily pressed. “Does she have any brothers or sisters?”

  “What was her family like?” Bailey jumped in.

  Ethan wanted to prove them wrong but part of him knew that they had a good point. He had been satisfied with the amount of information Brooke had shared, but maybe he shouldn’t have been, so he conjured up what she had told him and acted like the weight of it justified his lack of details. “Her parents are both gone,” he told them. “As you know, so are mine. We both related to losing parents so early, and we also both understood why we wouldn’t want to rehash that pain. She moved to Big Sur for a fresh start.”

  “How did her parents die?” Emily asked.

  Ethan shrugged.

  Bailey looked away and mumbled, “To lose one parent might be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness.”

  Ethan let that sink in. “That’s kind of profoundly said, Bailey.”

  “Don’t be so impressed,” Emily said. “His best lines are stolen from Shakespeare.”

  “Close,” Bailey laughed. “That one is courtesy of Oscar Wilde. They really ought to consider teaching you bloats some classics in your sorry schools—”

  “He’s just trying to say that it sounds like too many coincidences,” Emily said. “Can we—?”

  “Right, let’s stay on point,” Bailey agreed. “Tell us what else you know about her family. Anything, Gov. Names, numbers, old mail, odd references, siblings…something. This is what we do. If we can use our resources to solve this puzzle, it could prove that Stalker can do some
good. Think of the ad campaign possibilities.”

  Ethan shook his head.

  Bailey sneered. “I can’t believe you were going to propose to this girl.”

  “Awww,” Emily hummed. “You were?”

  Ethan shot Bailey a look of disdain. “I also told you that in confidence.”

  As if he didn’t hear him, Bailey told Emily, “He had been ring shopping.”

  “Awww,” Emily hummed again.

  “Sorry, mate,” Bailey said, “but you don’t know diddly about this woman. How could you have even considered marrying her?”

  “Maybe she was already married?” Emily suggested.

  Ethan scowled. “She wasn’t married.”

  “You don’t know that,” Bailey said. “People don’t change their identities unless they’re running from something—”

  “Or someone,” Emily added.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Ethan protested.

  “It’s also ridiculous that she moved out of your house the same day as your brother,” Bailey said, turning serious. “We don’t believe in coincidences. We believe in facts and analytics. The odds that they both left you on the same day are one in a million.”

  “Billion,” Emily corrected.

  Please, God, no!

  Bailey and Emily had had the same nasty thought, Ethan’s worst fear—a love triangle revealed. Could the two people he trusted most in the world have fallen in love and run off together? Was it remotely possible? Was it obvious to everyone else? His head was spinning and he couldn’t catch his breath.

  Bailey asked, “Have you tried calling?”

  “She was very clear—”

  “I meant your brother,” Bailey clarified. “Have you tried calling Jack?”

  “I thought it would be best to give him time to cool off and settle into his new life.” Ethan realized how that sounded—his new life—and his eyes shifted, somber and doleful.

  “Sorry, Gov,” Bailey said. “I know how hard this must be, but you have to look at the bright side…”

  Ethan looked up, hopeful for the first time.

  Bailey smirked. “Things couldn’t get any worse.”

  “Funny as a crutch,” Emily mumbled as she walked out.